K-DOCS

Logline

AUGUST, AGAIN is a searing and lyrical indictment of historical erasure. Following Han Jeongsun—a second-generation Korean atomic bomb survivor and one of the 10% of Hiroshima victims who were Korean—the film weaves personal memory and political urgency as it traces her journey from the rural fields of Hapcheon to the global stage of the United Nations. Through this intimate and transnational story of inherited trauma, the documentary confronts silence, demands justice, and calls for recognition across generations and borders in the nuclear age.KO Ahra, a deaf dancer, navigates a world where hearing aids offer only a partial connection to sound.

Synopsis

AUGUST, AGAIN will observe Jeongsun in her daily life: tending to her son, caring for her aging community of Korean A-bomb survivors and participating in memorial services and activist events with other hibakusha families. A key turning point in the story is her journey to the United Nations, where she joins a delegation of Korean survivors and descendants to testify and demand global recognition including Park Jungsoon, a 92 year old first generation survivor who is still campaigning. This international stage contrasts poignantly with the quiet dignity of her home life in Hapcheon.

Director's Statement

AUGUST, AGAIN began with a haunting question: Why had I never learned that 10% of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb victims were Korean?

This absence—both institutional and cultural—led me to explore how trauma is not only survived, but inherited. As a Korean filmmaker raised in the U.S., I approach this history from a place of both proximity and distance.

The story of Han Jeongsun, a second-generation atomic bomb survivor in Hapcheon, moved me deeply. Her quiet strength—caring for her disabled son while fighting for recognition of Korean hibakusha—is a powerful act of remembrance and resistance. This film is not just about the past, but its living aftershocks: genetic, emotional, and political.